CORRUPTION: Busting Public Servants

Smiling, joking, occasionally backslapping, Louis Turco presided
genially over a Newark city council meeting one afternoon last week.
Then an aide approached and whispered something into his ear.
The Democratic council president paled. He bowed his head and
hurried from the room. Turco had just learned that he had been
indicted on ten charges of mail fraud and four counts of income-tax evasion.

The scene has become depressingly familiar in U.S. state and municipal
politics. Over the past three years in New Jersey alone, 67 officials
have been indicted and 35 convicted. U.S....